There are countless avatars of the spinning goddess: Mari of the Basques, Holle of Germany, Laima of Lithuania and Latvia, Mokosh of Russia, the old Frankish Berthe Pedauque, They include local fatas such as Tante Arie in French Switzerland, Habetrot in Britain, and the Wendish Pshi-Polnitsa.
Among the Greeks, the spinner Fates are threefold, the ancient, mighty Moirae. This triunity is repeated in innumerable folk traditions all over medieval and early modern Europe. French peasants of Saintonge said that the fades (fates) or bonnes (“good women”) roamed in the moonlight as three old women, always carrying distaffs and spindles. The fades had prophetic powers and cast lots. They were seen along the banks of the Charente river, or near certain grottos, or near megalithic monuments. [Michon, Statistique de la Charente, in Sebillot I 444]
In Berry, a white faery carrying a distaff was said to walk on certain nights at the edge of an old mardelle called Spinner's Hole. Three pale ladies spun their distaffs by the Faeries' Rock near Langres. A spinner could be heard at Villy, but was only seen at dawn or dusk. [Sebillot, Metiers, 23-4] Portuguese women made offerings to faeries whose name shows its derivation from “the dianas”:
In the Algarve the memory is not extinct of female creatures called jãs or jans, for whom it used to be customary to leave a skein of flax and a cake of bread on the hearth. In the morning the flax would be spun as fine as hair and the cake would have disappeared. [Gallop, 58]
Women in western France made similar offerings. In the Landes, women placed fine flax at the entrance of caves or the edge of fountains inhabited by the hades, who instantly turned it into thread.
It was once believed that the faeries would come to the aid of spinners who implored them; in Upper Bretagne, if buttered bread and a flax doll was placed at the entrance to one of their grottos, the next day it would be found very well spun in the same place. [Sebillot, Metiers, 23-4]
Even in the far north, in a very different cultural world, the spinning wheel was sacred to the spring goddess of the Saami. She is the spirit maiden Rana Nedie, who makes the mountains green and feeds the reindeer. When sacrifices were made to her, they rubbed the blood on a spinning wheel and leaned it against her altar. [find cite]
The spinning faeries are often encountered near water. A Welsh faery woman would emerge from Corwrion Pool to spin on beautiful summer days, singing to herself, “Sìli ffrit, sìli ffrit...” Another tale says a faery used to borrow things from a Llyn farmwoman, but wouldn't give her name. Once she borrowed a spinning wheel. The woman overheard her singing while spinning, “Little did she know/ That Sìli go Dwt/ Is my name.” [Rhys II, 584, compares Silly Frit and Sìli go Dwt with the Scottish seelie (591) as in “seelie wights,” helpful faeries.]
The border Scots revered Habetrot as the goddess of spinners. She is seen near water, usually by a “holey” stone that is a gateway to the Otherworld. Habetrot appears as a helper and initiator of girls, bringing good fortune to them. It was said that “a shirt made by her was a sovereign remedy for all sorts of diseases.” [Briggs, 216] (More on her in another installment.)
Another spinning water faery was the Loireag. Warping, weaving, and washing of webs were her sacraments, and she saw to it that women followed the traditions. Singing was one of them, and it had to be melodious. A modern source dismisses the Loireag as “a small mite of womanhood that does not belong to this world but to the world thither” and “a plaintive little thing, stubborn and cunning.” [from Carmichael's Carmina Gadelica, in Briggs, 271]
Scottish faery lore is full of spinning and weaving. The Gyre-Carling, queen of the “good neighbors” (faery folk) oversaw the work of spinners in Fife. [Briggs, 325] The faeries could sometimes be heard chanting waulking songs: Ho! fir-e! fair-e, foirm! Ho! Fair-eag-an an cló! (“Well done, grand, bravo the web!”). Border Scots believed in the thrumpin, a fateful guardian with the power to take life, or Thrummy-cap, a faery wearing a hat made of wool that weavers clipped from the ends of their webs. [Evans-Wentz, 395]
The French said that faery divinities came to houses to spin on certain nights. An Alsatian ballad pictured them as three fates: “When midnight sounds / not a soul in the village awake / Then three spectres glide in the window/and sit at the three wheels / They spin, their arms moving silently / the threads hum rapidly onto the spindles...” As they finish, an owl cries from the cemetery, “What will become of the fine fabric/ and will there again be three engagement robes?” [Sebillot, M, 15]
Spring gossamer was often explained as the craft of faeries. An Italian saying—“See how much the three Marias have spun tonight”—substitutes a Christian name for the old triune goddess. [Grimm, 1533] The sacraments of spinning and weaving were transferred to certain saints: Germana of Bar-sur-Aube; Lucie of Sampigny, whose stone helped women conceive; and Genovefa of Brabant, who was said to sit behind the altar at the Frauenkirchen (“women's church”) where the buzz of her spinning wheel could be heard. [Eckenstein, 25-6]"
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